What's the solution to Toronto's traffic problems? - University of ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

All About Alumni THE TWO OF US Mehreen and Arsalan Rashid The heart wants what the heart wants, but Mehreen (BA 2006 UC) and Arsalan Rashid (BCom 2006 UC) offer a lesson in the virtues of patience MEHREEN: When I met Arsalan at the UTM Library, we talked about our love of reading comic books and watching cricket. There was something about Arsalan that I immediately connected with; it was during a conversation about superpowers we’d like to have that I realized he is as wacky as me. After I graduated, I went back home to Singapore because my parents wanted me there. Both Arsalan and I are Pakistani, and we’re very close to our families, so he understood. We had a five-year long-distance relationship, mostly over Skype. I came to Toronto, and he came to Singapore but the smallest gap we had between visits was a year. We were in each other’s lives, but solely through conversation. You could probably do a study about us and how the Internet helps long-distance relationships. ARSALAN: What drew me to Mehreen was her quirky sense of humour; she has a constant smile and is a very positive, happy person to be around. When she went back to Singapore, I realized how much Mehreen meant to me. I was just a bum fresh out of university and I couldn’t go to her parents and ask them to send their daughter to the other side of the world. So I studied and got some work experience to ask for their daughter’s hand. Calling was absolutely nerve-racking. I’ve been working as a foreign exchange trader so I’ve been involved with many tough calls. But this was…holy crap. I’ve never been so jittery. They didn’t say yes right away. They made me wait a couple of days because they wanted to make sure this was what Mehreen wanted. After they agreed, Mehreen and I met in London, where she was visiting her sister. I got down on one knee right next to the Millennium Bridge. We got married in Karachi, Pakistan, in April, then went on our honeymoon to Greece and then Mehreen flew home with me to Toronto. We expected an adjustment period after so many years apart, but it really just felt so natural. We stepped right back into being together. Peaceful Pursuits Jothi Shanmugam, a fourth-year student in criminology and peace and conflict studies, is devoted to bringing together communities for change. Through the Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue, she has worked with Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim Sri Lankans to promote peace in Sri Lanka. Shanmugan helped write a policy paper on Sri Lankan development and peace initiatives, which she presented last summer in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to government representatives from such countries as Canada, the U.K. and Switzerland. For her work, Shanmugam earned a Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award – which was given to 183 graduating U of T students for improving the world around them. She is also this year’s recipient of the Dean’s Student Leadership Award in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Shanmugam helped create BuildChange in which Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim students raised $25,000 to build wells in the war-affected northern regions of Sri Lanka. As part of Students for International Development, Shanmugam spent four months in Maragoli, Kenya, where she ran public-health and HIV-AIDS workshops. Upon learning that the village couldn’t afford to pay for glaucoma and cataract treatments, she started a network between the Sabatia Eye Hospital and Ministry of Health to create “eye camps” – which have provided eye care to more than 1,000 Kenyans. The Trinity College student was born in Sri Lanka and came to Canada as a refugee when she was seven. Shanmugam grew up with identity issues about being an immigrant, and her curiosity about why her life had to be uprooted led her to peace and conflict studies. “I wanted to learn why conflicts unfold in ways that leave behind animosity and rip communities apart. I had too many unanswered questions about conflict resolution, because it is close to my heart, it’s part of my identity.” – JESSICA LEWIS To read about all the Gordon Cressy award winners, visit alumni.utoronto.ca/cressy. 48 www.magazine.utoronto.ca PHOTO: TOP, COURTESY OF MEHREEN HASAN RASHID; BOTTOM, HENRY FEATHER
All About Alumni The largest clearcut in the world is in Bowron River Valley, B.C. It extends over 50,000 hectares FIRST PERSON Forest Warrior Charlotte Gill reminisces about life as a professional tree planter For 20 years, writer Charlotte Gill (BA 1996 Innis) worked as a tree planter in the forests of Canada. Her latest book, Eating Dirt, is a memoir of that time. Below is an adaptation, which begins with details about one day in the lives of planters who, like Gill, make a full-time living in the reforestation business. Our trucks climb the nameless mountains the way airplanes ascend, nosing up at the sky. We switch up and back along steep, cobbled surfaces – flattened shards of white rock chiselled from the slope. Before long, we find ourselves in the middle of a clearcut. We tumble out of our trucks like clothes from a dryer. Fog clings to the warp and weft of our tatters, the fine hairs on our cheekbones. We slide our feet down into tall leather boots with spiked soles. Loggers’ boots, made for walking on bark and slick logs. We slip our hands Over time, the work has the bodily effect of a car crash in extreme slow motion Charlotte Gill into heavy-duty gloves. We’re tree planters, gearing up for the daily grind. We chortle darkly, rubbing our palms together. There is nowhere to hide from the cold. A box of seedlings is ripped open. A paper bag torn. Bundles of plastic-wrapped seedlings tumble out. The stems are as long as a forearm, the roots grown in Styrofoam tubules to fit in the palms of our hands. Tree planters: little trees plus human beings, two nouns that don’t seem to want to come apart. We throw down our tree-planting bags and kneel next to them and cram them with trees. Then we abandon the scene, an explosion of brown paper and Saran Wrap snaking around on the road. We stomp out in every direction, right and left, up and down the mountain. An inaudible gun goes off over our heads, and the day begins. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun is our pace clock in the sky. I’m not too bad at planting trees, if only because of the practice. I have climbed the flanks of a hundred mountains and hoisted my limbs over countless logs and stumps. I’ve stuck a million seedlings in the ground. I don’t mind reading bush maps or flying around in helicopters or driving big pickup trucks. I hardly ever get cold in the rain. But I am not a natural tree planter. I have the hands of a typist. Being filthy and clammy makes me hate myself. And most of all I’d rather plant a pretty tree than a fast one. Which is one thing a tree planter should never do if she intends to earn a living. Planting trees isn’t hard. As any veteran will tell you, it isn’t the act of sowing itself but the ambient complications. It comes with snow pellets. Or clouds of biting insects so thick and furious it is possible to end a day with your eyelids swollen shut and blood trickling from your ears. There are swaying fields of venomous plants like devil’s club and stinging nettle. There are sunburns and hornets. There are leeches and ticks, bears and cougars. There are infections and chafe and boils and trench foot. It’s possible to be so cold you feel dreamily warm and so hot you fall into shivers. Over time the work has the bodily effect of a car crash in extreme slow motion. Besides that, the task itself is thankless and boring, which is to say it is plain and silent. It is also one of the dirtiest jobs left in the modern world. What could compel a person to make a career of such a thing Some people think planting trees is as boring and crazy-making as stuffing envelopes or climbing a StairMaster. I love my job for exactly the opposite reason, because it is so full of things. There are so many living creatures to touch and smell and look at in the field that it’s often a little intoxicating. A setting so full of all-enveloping sensations that it just sweeps you up and spirits you away, like Vegas does to gamblers or Mount Everest to climbers. It has a way of filling up a life with verbs that push into one another, with no idle space in between. So that you just can’t believe all the things you saw or all the living beings that brushed past your skin. Eating Dirt is published by Greystone Books in association with the David Suzuki Foundation. PHOTO: COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE GILL summer 2012 49
Page 1 and 2: Perfect Harmony Music’s curative
Page 3 and 4: Summer 2012 Volume 39, No. 4 32 Rev
Page 5 and 6: Letters I often walked out of North
Page 7 and 8: GREAT JOURNEYS Caribbean Sea Jan 4
Page 9 and 10: Calendar MORE EVENTS! Check out the
Page 11 and 12: Life on Campus “I need to stay co
Page 13 and 14: Life on Campus Deep Saini, vice-pre
Page 15 and 16: Life on Campus Since Hart House ope
Page 17 and 18: Life on Campus The Rabbi Brickner s
Page 19: Life on Campus Mengqi Wang (left) a
Page 22 and 23: Leading Edge The Asian long-horned
Page 24 and 25: Leading Edge Around 500 BCE, the an
Page 26 and 27: Leading Edge According to comScore,
Page 29 and 30: A new U of T research centre will i
Page 31 and 32: ight itself: the activations more c
Page 33 and 34: Get U of T Magazine Electronically
Page 35 and 36: Forty years ago, an intrepid group
Page 37 and 38: Improbably, another group of women
Page 39: Instructors, tutorial assistants an
Page 42 and 43: OR YEARS, JIM YATES, A VETERAN LOBL
Page 44 and 45: ecommended the LRT, which garnered
Page 46 and 47: Thank You! Your donations to U of T
Page 48 and 49: All About Alumni As recently as the
Page 52 and 53: All About Alumni 60 SECONDS WITH Mu
Page 54 and 55: Time Capsule Prof. Vera Peters teac
Page 56: pm40065699 volume 39 no. 4 www.maga

What's the solution to Toronto's traffic problems? - University of ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?